Officer's shoulder scales : Captain William Mair, Military Mounted Police

Pair of gilded brass shoulder scales (epaulettes) with eleven scales finishing with a domed end encircled by a raised crescent. A large silver Queen Victoria crown is placed over the lower three scales, with ornate voided letters, 'MP', flanked by a silver kangaroo and emu placed over the domed end. The bodies of the kangaroo and emu face away from the letters, while their heads are turned back to face them. The uppermost scales carry a button, made by Firmin, King & Co, Birmingham, with a Queen Victoria Crown within a decorative border. The epaulettes are lined with dark blue wool cloth, each bearing a small paper label reading, 'RIGHT' and 'LEFT'. Two pairs of lugs protrude through the cloth lining of each epaulette, placed at each end of the scaled shank. Blue silk ribbon ties with metal points are threaded through them for attachment to a uniform coat.

These shoulder scales were worn by Captain William Mair, as part of his everyday working dress, during his service with the Mounted Police in the colony of New South Wales between 1843 and 1850. The use of the emu and kangaroo is thought to have been the first instance of images of Australian fauna appearing on officially sanctioned uniform insignia.

Born in Scotland in 1806 William Mair was commissioned in the 99th (Lanarkshire) Regiment in 1830. Between 1831 and 1841 he served in Mauritius and Ireland. Mair arrived in Hobart Town in March 1842 as escort for 200 convicts. Soon after, he moved to Sydney where the rest of the 99th arrived in detachments. In the following year Mair acted as regimental paymaster and sometimes quartermaster. He transferred to the Mounted Police in February 1843 and was appointed adjutant of the unit.

With only light duties to occupy him in Sydney Mair toured outlying stations at Maitland, Penrith, Bathurst, Berrima, Goulburn and Yass. In December he travelled by sea to Melbourne to visit stations in the Port Phillip district. He returned to Sydney overland through Albury and Goulburn in 1844. In October 1846 Charles La Trobe, then superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales, sought more mounted police to control riots between Irish Orange and Catholic factions in Melbourne and asked Mair to take command of the Port Phillip mounted force. Mair resigned as adjutant and rode to Melbourne, recruiting additional troopers on the way. Once in Melbourne he was also appointed a magistrate. Mair remained in Melbourne until he was recalled to Sydney in 1849, shortly before the Mounted Police were disbanded.

In 1851 La Trobe, by now lieutenant-governor of the new colony of Victoria, appointed Mair a police magistrate, initially in the Port Fairy district, and then the Ballarat District. In 1852 he was asked to raise, equip and drill a mounted police force for escort and other duties in the goldfields which eventually numbered 280 men and was known as Mair’s Gold Mounted Police Force. The various Victorian police forces were amalgamated in January 1853 and Mair was appointed paymaster of the new force. He had remained in the army but sold his commission in 1855, serving in the police force until 1875.

In 1860 Mair enrolled and commanded a volunteer rifle corps at Brighton. He was active in the Victorian militia until 1886, retiring with the honorary rank of colonel. Mair died at Nyora, Gippsland in 1904.

The Mounted Police was a unit formed by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane, in September 1825. It was raised as a response to the rise in crimes from bushrangers and escaped convicts as well as increased incidents of violence between settlers and Aboriginal people, and originally consisted of two officers and 13 other ranks. The need for a mounted unit was paramount to provide the police with the ability to respond quickly to incidents as well as providing a means of pursuing bushrangers. Recruits were seconded from the British infantry regiments serving in Australia, a practice that would continue for the entire history of the unit. The men were still paid from regimental funds and were subject to military discipline, but their deployments and duties were controlled by the New South Wales civil authority, which also supplied and housed the men.

One of the first actions involving the Mounted Police was the capture of the notorious 'Sullivan Gang' bushrangers in the Bathurst area in March 1826. The success of actions like this proved the value of the unit and allowed for its expansion. The continued growth in settlements in New South Wales led to increased conflict with Aboriginal people, as well as increased activity from bushrangers. This would lead to rapid growth of the Military Mounted Police, which by 1839 numbered eight officers and 157 other ranks split into five areas of operation, under the command of Major James Nunn. The operational districts were: Sydney, Parramatta and Wollongong; Mount Victoria and Wellington; Bong-Bong, Braidwood and Yass; the Hunter Valley; and an area of what would become Victoria in 1851, called the Hume River (an early alternate name for the upper Murray River) and Geelong.

The Mounted Police continued to be one of the main arms of law enforcement in rural New South Wales until it was disbanded in 1850. The unit was replaced by a civilian mounted police service as part of scheme to amalgamate all police units in New South Wales into one organisation.

Details of the uniforms and insignia worn by the Mounted Police are sketchy but their uniform was based on that worn by the British Light Dragoons (light cavalry), in full dress a dark blue shell jacket with scarlet facings and matching trousers with scarlet side stripes, with a plumed shako, gold fringed epaulettes for officers, brass shoulder scales for the rank and file, and a sabretache. Although full dress was certainly worn by the small number of men from the Mounted Police who were detailed to the New South Wales governor’s escort on formal occasions, and would have been owned by the relatively few officers in the unit, it is not known how widely it was worn generally. In the field in rural districts men, and presumably officers, wore a dark blue shell jacket with shoulder scales, blue trousers in winter with a soft blue peakless forage cap, and in summer white linen trousers with a broad brimmed straw or cabbage tree hat. While the shoulder scales seen here are those of an officer, it is not known if those worn by the men also carried the MP lettering and emu and kangaroo.

The manufacturer's stamp on the buttons dates them from 1839 to 1841, but the scales themselves may be of a slightly later date. Officers in British regiments, and the Mounted Police were required to purchase their uniforms. Expensive items, such as epaulettes, shako and shoulder belt plates, and shoulder scales were often passed from a retiring officer to an incoming one to save cost.